Also in this Issue

Object Overruled

A rash of rough and ungainly sculptures and installations, made of everything from junk to construction materials, household items, even trucks, has been infiltrating museums and galleries. Call it antiart, protest art, or sometimes simply poetryBarbara A. MacAdam

Paint It Bleak

Contemporary artists are taking Pop in a new direction, with violent, angst-ridden, and disturbing works that comment obliquely on celebrity and politicsEric Bryant

‘Rosebud,’ ‘Lola,’ and the ‘Jack of Hearts’

Mary Heilmann packs abstract painting with as much personal history and emotional content as it can holdJori Finkel

A ‘Speaking Likeness’

You can forget the name and résumé of Donegal Man, the subject of a recent painting and etching by Lucian Freud. All that counts is what’s there to be seenWilliam Feaver

National News

New York Motion on Wally?; Curators to learn leadership; Ileana Sonnabend: A lifetime in art; Herbert Muschamp: New architecture’s advocate Spotlight Olga Viso: Making connections Los Angeles R. B. Kitaj: A painter whose life was a work of reference

International News

Art Market

London Asia major: Records for works by Chinese artists, in particular, ratcheted up totals for the fall contemporary sales

Books

A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917–1932 By John Richardson • Courbet By Linda Nochlin • Vitebsk: The Life of Art By Aleksandra Shatskikh • The Clarks of Cooperstown: Their Singer Sewing Machine Fortune, Their Great and Influential Art Collections, Their Forty-Year Feud By Nicholas Fox Weber • Shoot the Widow: Adventures of a Biographer in Search of Her Subject By Meryle Secrest • Euan Uglow: The Complete Paintings By Catherine Lampert and Richard Kendall • Resonant Echoes: The Art of Basil Alkazzi By Dennis Wepman • Storm Chaser: A Photographer’s Journey By Jim Reed

Issues

December 2007 Issue

Starting with the Old Masters and continuing through the present, John Castagno has documented signatures, monograms, and initials—most of them readable, some of them strange or illegible—and published them in ten books. Read More

Politicians and oligarchs who are collecting archeological treasures in Ukraine are not only encouraging illegal excavations, they are using the objects to promote the myth of an advanced ancient culture that was the birthplace of civilization. Read More